Opening Doors in a New World: Salah’s Story, Part Two

Nearly ten years ago, Salah reached Jakarta as a teenage asylum-seeker from Yemen, after losing family members and his home to civil war. He spent several years with Roshan as a student before being resettled to the US in 2019. This story continues to trace his remarkable journey. 

It has been five years since we last checked in with Salah, a former Roshan student from Yemen who was happily resettled to the United States in 2019. Last time we spoke, he was attending high school in Michigan and working part-time as a cook.

We spoke again right before Thanksgiving weekend, a rare break for the typically busy Salah. Now 21 years old, Salah is a student at the prestigious University of Michigan. When he isn’t attending classes or studying, he is usually at work. “Now it is more work also, I have to work full time and then go to the university, in-person classes,” he says. During especially busy periods, such as exam preparations, he gets as little as two hours of sleep per day. “Everything is harder, but still, like, we can do it. It’s life. We grow up now,” he says. 

Nevertheless, after years of living in Indonesia without the right to work, Salah has enjoyed actively building his career and pursuing higher education. After his first workplace – the restaurant – was hit hard by the pandemic, he applied to work at a superstore and stayed there for a year, fulfilling different roles: “Restocking the shelves, cashier, customer service. I went everywhere.”

While taking classes online at a local community college to complete a two-year associate degree, Salah began developing an interest in 3D modeling and Computer-aided Design (CAD). This, along with a connection he had made in the industry, helped him get his foot in the door at a company manufacturing medical devices. Salah has worked there for the past two and a half years, first as an operator making hospital beds. “I love it. I went there, building carbon fibre beds for surgery, all that stuff,” he says. Gradually, he worked his way up to becoming an Assembly Designer, then a Quality Engineer there, thriving even despite the layoffs that impacted the business. “My goal is to grow up with the company,” he says.

It was during this time that Salah thought about how education would help him advance in his career, having experienced firsthand at Roshan how it has the power to open doors.  He decided to pursue a four-year Bachelor’s degree instead. Last winter, he applied and was accepted for a transfer to the University of Michigan to study Mechanical Engineering. 

It hasn’t been all work and study. Salah had more big, happy news to share with us. After moving out of his host family’s house and getting his own apartment, they reached out to him with a favor to ask: they were hosting a young woman from Afghanistan, Sayna, who had just been resettled and needed a job. Salah helped her find work at his old restaurant, and later helped her get to her sister in Detroit. He found they had a lot in common. “We went through all [the same] situations. We don’t have to explain to each other what we’ve been through,” he says. “No one will understand her better than me, and I would not find someone else to understand my situation [better] than her.” 

They got married that same year. “I lived by myself for a long time, and now I guess it’s time to build my own family,” he says. His former host mother helped to introduce him to Sayna’s family. Salah first got blessing from Sayna’s sister, who then assisted with translating as Salah asked Sayna’s parents for permission over a video call. “Right now, we live together and study [...] going to work, same thing. It’s great.”

As Salah reflects on how he has been able to thrive in his post-resettlement life, he attributes much of his success to the education he gained at Roshan. Learning English meant that he could better adapt to life in the U.S. “When I left Indonesia, I already prepared myself. I was speaking English – not perfect, but a way that I can communicate with people, asking help from them. Reading, writing, all that stuff, it did help a lot.” He kept all the Roshan certificates he earned, which helped to demonstrate his readiness while enrolling at school. His Roshan education even allowed him to be placed in more advanced classes. “It gave me a boost.”

It was also at Roshan that he first learned about the importance of connections. Remembering the lessons from his favorite teacher, Mr. Scott, Salah says, “I built my connections, that’s how Roshan teach me [...] Communication, building connection, helping people who support you.” This skill helped him access opportunities to build his career while being as helpful as he could to his colleagues. At the same time, being part of the community taught Salah how to communicate effectively and form supportive relationships with others. 

Together, this even helped him to overcome the ignorance or biases he experienced from others. “I just tell them, ‘Look, yeah. I [was] born this way, so it’s not something that you can change, or you can change where you were born. So, if you [were] born in my country, you will be like me: lovely, you know, friendly.’” He found that people were surprised at the level of education he was able to achieve as a refugee, and often asked how he spoke English so well. This challenged their perceptions and made it easier for Salah to find acceptance among them.

Salah still looks back very fondly at his days in Indonesia and at Roshan. He remembers waking up early to come to the learning centre and staying there for the entire day. As a young man living in a shelter, Roshan was a ‘home base’. “If I start remembering how I used to live first before Roshan, we didn’t have communication or talking with people. I was the kind to sit at home and watch movie, just lay down, sleep, no purpose of life – continuously being hopeless,” he recalls. “Your night, it’s morning, and morning, it’s night.” At Roshan he found purpose, structure and support. “If you have problems with real-life issues, you can talk with great people who can advise you on stuff to do,” Salah says.

He still talks to many people about Roshan (which, he says, sometimes gets misheard as ‘Russia’). “I hope that Roshan gets as much support as they can, because this is the only way that they can support us as immigrants,” he says. “If I did not start learning there, I would have come here not knowing what to do next.”

Though he has achieved many things in the years since leaving Indonesia, Salah still has many dreams and goals, including finishing his degree and visiting his ill mother back in Yemen. Another one of his dreams, Salah says, is to one day come back to Roshan and return the favor by helping out.  

“I wish for Roshan every success and every great thing. They always were the best for me, and they will always be the best. I hope I can help them as much as I can.” 

This story was contributed by Sheri Lohardjo, a former YICF/Roshan staff member.